


In You I Find Solace

by EchoResonance



Series: Sheith Week 2k16 [2]
Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Fluff, Hurt/Comfort, Light Angst, M/M, Nightmares
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-10-23
Updated: 2016-10-23
Packaged: 2018-08-24 05:40:38
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,676
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8359372
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/EchoResonance/pseuds/EchoResonance
Summary: When a shout finally wrenches itself from him, he finds himself sitting bolt upright in his room, on his bed in the subtle, blue-violet light of the castle. Something warm presses against his side and a weight rests across his hips. He cringes from the contact.“I’m here,” Shiro murmurs, voice still heavy with sleep. Something soft brushes against Keith’s forehead, but he doesn’t bother opening his eyes to investigate. “I’m with you, Keith. You’re not alone.”





	

**Author's Note:**

> Sheith Week 2k16, Day Two: Alone/Together

The silence presses in. Falls over him like a heavy blanket, smothering him, tangling his limbs and suffocating him. The brightly lit room is empty but for him. It doesn’t mean anything that there’s a couch and blankets and a table laden with papers and books. It is empty. Like always, he’s on his own.

Keith’s breath scrapes against his throat. His hands are clenched into fists because if they weren’t they would have trembled. He wants to leave. To fling himself from the door and run as the shack shrank into the distance behind him. It doesn’t matter that the desert outside is just as bereft, just as inhospitable; it, at least, won’t close in on him in stifling silence. But his feet are rooted to the spot.

The silence is an old and unwelcome familiarity. He isn’t scared because it’s strange--he’s scared because there is nothing he knows better. Cold fingers of nothing trail across his neck, down his arms, trace down each bump of his spine, and he wishes for the umpteenth time that it would leave, leave and never come back to haunt him. How pathetic that the only thing that ever stays is the one thing that he doesn’t want.

Finally he wrenches himself away from the cluttered shack, barren of life, and lurches for the door. It swing open just before his fingers can touch it. He tumbles out not onto the cracked earth outside his shack but onto the cold, smooth floor of the Castle of Lions. He stumbles to his feet, looking all around him, opening his mouth to call out.

His voice won’t come. Panic closes his throat around words, names he can’t quite think of but beg to be called. Without knowing what he’s looking for Keith runs, dashing through dimly lit corridors that all look the same as something slinks after him. He doesn’t know what it is, only that he can’t let it catch him. He sprints away but no hall looks different from any other no matter how many turns he takes, and the thing behind him is gaining. The cold feeling returns, sliding underneath his skin and slowing his staggering steps.

His toe catches on something--rather, on nothing--and his knees hit the floor. Lungs burning, Keith curls in on himself, his fingers knotting into his hair. The silence beckons him, goads him, reminds him that it is all he has, that in all his life it has been his one and only companion. He shuts his eyes as if this will block it out, but the coldness, the darkness, only expands. They wrap around him, hissing, dragging him deeper…

When a shout finally wrenches itself from him, he finds himself sitting bolt upright in his room, on his bed in the subtle, blue-violet light of the castle. Something warm presses against his side and a weight rests across his hips. He cringes from the contact. 

“Keith.”

Keith stiffens. The pressure against his thigh shifts and lessens, and the weight across his hips disappears. A hand, cool and smooth, settles on his bare shoulder. The touch is light as a feather, but Keith still flinches under it. It falls away.

His skin feels raw. His lungs still fight for breath and his heart still abuses his ribs. His broken, ragged fingernails cut into the palms of his bare hands and sweat plasters his bangs to his forehead. Everything is too much; the feel of blankets against his skin, his hair sticking to his neck, the hum of energy and the ragged sounds of his breathing, the soft lighting, all of it. He wants to curl in on himself, block it all out. It’s hard. Readjusting is so hard and he’s no good at it. The last time he had a dream like that, it had taken over an hour for his heart rate to lower to something reasonable, and another after that before understanding that he wasn’t going to be getting back to sleep.

However, last time, he’d jolted awake to an empty room. After a tense moment in which he fights every impulse to leap from bed and go to the training deck until he collapses from exhaustion, Keith turns to face Shiro. It’s the most he can do, the only acknowledgement he can give. His voice is gone again, denying him the right to ask for what he needs, to invite Shiro closer now.

The black paladin watches him with a soft expression, his hands folded patiently in his lap. When Keith finally meets his gaze, Shiro smiles and lifts his human hand to Keith’s face, cupping his jaw and stroking his thumb just beneath Keith’s lower lip. His touch is warm, calloused from piloting and other things he never speaks about. Keith leans into his palm, closing his eyes as he covers Shiro’s hand with his own.

“I’m here,” Shiro murmurs, voice still heavy with sleep. Something soft brushes against Keith’s forehead, but he doesn’t bother opening his eyes to investigate. “I’m with you, Keith. You’re not alone.”

A shaky sigh leaves Keith’s lips. His hand curls around Shiro’s and pulls it away from his cheek so he can lace their fingers together. He drops his forehead onto Shiro’s shoulder, breathing in his scent and willing it to burn the dusty smell of an abandoned house from his memory. Shiro is so, so warm, and when his metal arm slides around Keith’s waist and pulls him in tighter, he’s all there is in Keith’s world. 

“I’m here,” Shiro promises again. He kisses the top of Keith’s head, then rests his cheek there. “I’m here.”

Patiently, he waits. Keith’s hand separates from his after a time and Shiro wraps that arm around Keith’s shoulders. A moment later, Keith reaches up and curls his fingers in the back of Shiro’s shirt.

Suddenly he’s being smothered. His back is against the bed again and Shiro’s weight is pressing him down against the mattress. His nose is smashed uncomfortably against Shiro’s collar. Keith yelps and smacks his back repeatedly, but Shiro only laughs and hugs him tighter, covering Keith’s flushed face in kisses. Keith’s legs kick out on either side of Shiro’s, but that isn’t much help.

“Shiro…” Keith gasps, trying to buck him off. “You’re... _ heavy… _ ”

Still chuckling, Shiro rolls off, but his arms stay around Keith and hold him close. Keith stares at him with the most exasperated look the boy can muster when his cheeks are still burning, then rolls his eyes and tucks his head beneath Shiro’s chin. His hands lay folded between them, pressed against both of their chests. The trembling has eased.

“I love you,” Shiro whispers into his hair.

“Me too…” Keith mumbles into his shirt. Shiro smiles against his temple.

“You love you too?” Shiro teases.

Keith stiffens and splutters; he tries to sit up but Shiro’s arms keep him trapped.

“Wh--no, that’s not--I meant--” Keith stammers. Shiro can imagine how red his cheeks are turning.

“I know,” Shiro says, squeezing Keith’s waist. “I know.”

Keith groans.

“Why am I so bad at this?” he growls.

“What was that?” Shiro prompts. “I can’t really hear you.”

Keith makes a noise of irritation and tries to lean back, but to no avail. Even as he tries Shiro’s hold on him strengthens, pulling him so near that hugging him any tighter could only have resulted in them fusing into a single person. It isn’t the first time it’s happened, but Keith has yet to figure out an efficient means of escape. Sagging in defeat, Keith gives Shiro’s shin one more half-hearted nudge with his toes and then lays still. Cautiously Shiro loosens his hold.

“You know, one of these days you’re gonna squeeze too tight and break something,” Keith complains, turning his head so that his words aren’t muffled.

“Impossible,” Shiro scoffs. “I’d never hurt you.”

“You say that, but you were just trying to crush the air out of me,” Keith refutes.

“I was not!”

“Really? Because a side effect of putting someone in a vice is that breathing gets kind of tough.”

“You were not in a vice!”

“Sure felt like it.”

“Oh, come on, it wasn’t that bad,” Shiro cajoles, bumping Keith’s knee with his own. “Right?”

Keith rolls his eyes and bumps him back.

“I didn’t say it was  _ bad _ ,” he says, lips quirking. “I’m just saying, maybe you don’t know your own strength.”

“I would never hurt you Keith,” Shiro vows. “I know my own strength well enough for that to be fact.”

“Yeah, yeah,” Keith sighs, draping an arm over Shiro’s waist. “Just, for future reference, I like being able to breathe.”

“I’ll try to keep that in mind,” Shiro says drily.

He leans away from Keith, just a little, just so that he can look down at his companion. Keith raises an eyebrow at him and his lips curve, heart fluttering for reasons entirely separate from the dream that had startled him awake. What was it? He can’t recall, not under Shiro’s glowing gaze.

Still smiling, he leans up and brushes his lips across Shiro’s, feeling the other man smile against him. The arms around his waist slide away and then there are hands cradling him, sliding along his sides and tracing his chest. Keith hums in approval and Shiro chuckles.

When they part, they’re both flushed and a little short of breath. Keith nuzzles against Shiro’s shoulder and returns his hands to the space between them, clasped almost as if in prayer. Shiro lets Keith use his left arm as a pillow and drapes his right across Keith’s waist, absently tracing circles against the small of his back.

“Go back to sleep,” Shiro murmurs. “I’ll be right here when you wake up.”

Keith doesn’t answer. He doesn’t need to. Without a word he merely shifts closer so that their bodies are flush and their legs tangled. With their heads resting on the same pillow and Shiro enveloping Keith almost entirely, they drift back to sleep.


End file.
